We don’t believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans.

Anybody who tells you that a two-day conference, you’re going to turn into the General Patton of leadership, they’re not telling you the truth. But you can learn the fundamentals; you can absolutely understand the fundamentals.

If you make up your own mind, you can only blame yourself.

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.

A lot has happened over the years. And while this nation has been tested by war, and it’s been tested by recession and all manner of challenges – I stand before you again tonight, after almost two terms as your president, to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before.

Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.

You can’t have a value structure without a hierarchy. They’re the same thing because a value structure means one thing takes precedence over another.

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

I’ve just tried to grow up in the most natural and gradual process that I possibly can and make choices I feel are right for me and my fans.

If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you’ll be amazed at the results.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

When you’re in a leadership role, you can never please all of the people all of the time. There’s also a lot of responsibility that goes along with it that others may not realize.

A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and do the same for a group of executives.

I don’t really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.

Concentration of executive power, unless it’s very temporary and for specific circumstances, let’s say fighting world war two, it’s an assault on democracy.

If you’re looking for the safe choice, you shouldn’t be supporting a black guy named Barack Obama to be the next leader of the free world.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

I’ve noticed a terrible thing, which is I will agree to anything if it’s far enough in the future.

One man with courage is a majority.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

The President is always abused. If he isn’t, he isn’t doing anything.

It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

Warren Buffet told me once and he said always follow your gut. When you have that gut feeling, you have to go with don’t go back on it.

All leaders in the Lord’s Church are called by proper authority. No prophet or any other leader in this Church, for that matter, has ever called himself or herself. No prophet has ever been elected.

I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.

It’s not easy being young. It’s hard to know what to do.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

We’re not like robots. God promises to guide us through the Holy Spirit, but He gives us the freedom to make our own decisions.

The people of the world genuinely want peace. Some day the leaders of the world are going to have to give in and give it to them.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

When things haven’t gone well for you, call in a secretary or a staff man and chew him out. You will sleep better and they will appreciate the attention.

Every President I think I’ve ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn’t quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently.

I give opinions, not advice.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

Sin, also for those who don’t have faith, exists when one goes against one’s conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

Leadership is influence.

I feel good because I believe I have made progress in rebuilding the people’s trust in their government.

Political courage is not political suicide.

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.

It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward into the future, or past to the back.

If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does, he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees.

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

The problem with Yanks is they are wimps.

You have to just make the choices you make in life. I made the choices I made because I believed they were right for me.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

When you’re not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it’s important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.